Sunday, September 30, 2012

Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan wouldn't even tell Fox News today what the Romney/Ryan tax plan is all about. But ... but ... I thought Ryan was a numbers guy? Isn't that what they said back when he was nominated?

Not today, though. Mum's the word. And I wonder how this bodes for Romney in the debates? If his boy Paul can't explain the tax loophole situation on friendly Fox News, then how is Daddy Warbucks going to manage on stage in front of millions of voters who are already hostile to him as a candidate? Good luck with that, Mitt.

Maybe Ryan knew he couldn't do it without bringing up the 47% of moochers and parasites, or conjuring up the ghost of Ayn Rand. So, tick a lock.

The Obama campaign has blasted the Romney-Ryan ticket for not providing details on how it would give Americans such large tax breaks without growing the deficit. Ryan reiterated in an interview on "Fox News Sunday" that the plan would drop taxpayers' bills by 20 percent without costing a dime, due to closed tax loopholes, but he was short on specifics when pressed by host Chris Wallace.

“You haven’t given me the math,” Wallace said in one exchange.

“I don’t have the ... It would take me too long to go through all of the math,” Ryan responded.

“But let me say it this way,” he went on. “You can lower tax rates 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, home purchases, for health care. What we’re saying is people are going to get lower tax rates and therefore they will not send as much money to Washington.”

What was he going to say? "I don't have the permission?" or "I don't have the magic calculator with me?" or "I don't have the stomach to see the comments from the Left if I really told you what our plans are like?"

David Axelrod of the Obama Administration tweeted:

Wonder if Americans clear their afternoon, Paul Ryan would have the time to explain Romney's tax plan?huff.to/V1F2Qe

It's all over but the shouting. Well, except the debates, but I don't think those are going to make much difference. Maybe it's just all over but the crying, recriminations, blame game, and circular firing squad. Well, actually all that has started even in the national media, so we have to look away when it becomes embarrassing. And try not to enjoy it too much, heh . . .

Whatever: the fact remains that many of the Electoral Maps are beginning to look the same as the race tightens up and early voting is beginning in many states. The idea that this is still a "horse-race" between Romney and Obama, or that many states are in the "toss-up" category is probably bogus. I don't rule out voter suppression or election day shenanigans, but Romney almost needs to win every swing state in order to get to 270 electoral votes, and I just don't see how that could happen at this point.

Business Insider quotes Romney saying last week: "I’m very pleased with some polls, less so with other polls, but frankly at this early stage, polls go up, polls go down."

Yep, polls do go up and down, yet many voters are locking in their choices by getting to a voting booth now or sending in their absentee ballots. The election is "happening now," as Wolf Blitzer likes to say.

Business Insider also points out the pitfalls of Romney's almost impossible path to victory because every state they mention is leaning Obama at the present time. If Romney loses one, he basically loses all of them.

Florida is a virtual must-win for Romney. If he loses, he would have to take swing states Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada and Virginia to get past 270. That's an extremely illogical path to victory — especially because two of those states (Ohio and Wisconsin) have moved to the "lean Obama" column on the RCP average.

. . . Without Ohio, Romney has to win Florida, as well as New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado.

. . . if Romney loses [Virginia] he'll have to hang onto Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado as the most plausible path to victory. If Ohio keeps leaning as left as it has been lately, Romney will have to do something implausible — like steal away Michigan or Pennsylvania, two states where Obama has a huge advantage.

. . . If Romney cannot win North Carolina, it's a twofold kick in the gut. First, it would likely mean he's not performing well in other, less-reliable Republican states. Second, he'd have to hold onto Ohio, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado to get to 270.

. . . Without Colorado, Romney would have to hold onto Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada.

So there it is - even if Romney holds onto Colorado or North Carolina, what are the chances of all those other states going his way? His chances are slim to none. Obama wins. End of story. I'm not taking anything for granted - just look at the maps!

David Corn at Mother Jones has done it again - unearthed a video from 1985 in which a younger Mitt Romney brags about Bain "harvesting" companies to reap a profit. It was given to them by a former employee of Bain. Unbelievable! I don't know much, but I bet that even people in the business community must be just as sick of hearing about Bain Capital flipping companies for profit as we regular folk.

Romney sounds like the grim reaper, and I'm sure that's how the ex-employees of all those outsourced and ruined companies feel to this day. The Grim Reaper Romney.

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.

The video was included in a CD-ROM created in 1998 to mark the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that gave birth to Bain Capital. Here is the full clip, as it appeared on that CD-ROM (the editing occurred within the original):

Mitt Romney:TRANSCRIPT: Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit…

It is ridiculous to imply that "all" the polls are "skewed" except for certain bad polls by biased people like Rasmussen or Karl Rove that show their guy Romney leading. Isn't it more likely that they are the ones who are skewed instead of the 15 other pollsters, some of whom are non-partisan or who take a poll of polls average?

But none of that matters if you are Republican clinging to false hope. They just can't accept that the very likable and inspirational - although African American - President Obama is way ahead in the polls. Because . . . arithmatic.

As of tonight, Nate Silver of 538 Blog is giving Barack Obama an 84% chance - well, let's be scientific and say "83.9%" chance of winning the Presidency.

Mitt Romney has, therefore, only 16.1% chance, no rounding necessary.

That's the mathematical truth, unless you are a Republican in denial.

The polls are what they are - just a statistical snapshot of the country's rejection of goofy-strange Mitt Romney as President of the United States. Simple as that.

But denial is strong in them, like the Force. For instance, here's a stammering and sputtering Karl Rove spinning about how "unscientific" the polls are, but even Bill O'Reilly isn't drinking the kool-aid on Fox News:

O'REILLY: . . . Are these polls dishonest?

ROVE: No. Look, we endow them with a false scientific precision they simply don't have. If you've got nine points more Democrats than Republicans and you're nine points more --
(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: You you're going to have a poll that reflects that.

ROVE: -- yes, nine points more Obama. Think about this. Romney and Obama get each roughly the same percentage of Republicans and Democrats as -- as their opponent. That is to say they carry their -- their base overwhelmingly. Romney, among Independents is winning by three points.

So -- so if Romney is winning the Independents and winning the Republicans do you think in a battle ground state like Florida, he's nine points down and the answer is no....

ROVE: . . . So look, we've got to be careful about, you know, we have a proliferation of these polls. There have been 87 national polls in the last 30 days. That's more polls than were run in the last six months of the 1980 presidential race.

O'REILLY: All right.

ROVE: Last week -- last week alone, we had 51 state level polls; and the week before that, 41.
(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: I understand that but -- but here -- here -- look, from my point of view as a news analyst and I believe that the folks know I'm honest in that regard, when news agencies like the CBS News on the radio report the polling and it shows that Barack Obama has leapt out to a big lead in Florida and Ohio, that gets inside people's minds. They remember that. And that can only help the President. That helps the President.

Wolf, the Romney camp and their allies are suggesting that a lot of those so-called mainstream polls are skewed in some way, that they're not accurate. I want to play a short clip from Mr. Romney's political director, Rich Beeson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICH BEESON, POLITICAL DIRECTOR, ROMNEY CAMPAIGN: We trust our internal polls. I don't make any campaign decisions based off what I read in the "Washington Post." So I'm not going to get into the specifics of what our polls say or don't say. I trust our numbers and that's what we're basing our decisions off of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: But he won't give us those numbers.

So, Wolf, here's how it goes. Every time bad numbers come out, I hear campaigns saying, we don't use those numbers, we use our own. But I never hear that when the numbers are good. Am I wrong?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": You're not wrong, but the fundamental fact of what's going on right now is the numbers in these key battleground states, according to almost all of the reputable national polls out there, show that Obama is ahead in most of these key battleground states. That's obviously disconcerting to a lot of Republicans. Some of them, like Karl Rove, for example, have repeatedly gone out there and suggested that these polls are biased against the Republicans because they're oversampling Democrats, for example, as opposed to Republicans. And as a result, don't trust these polls, they're not reliable. So it's sort of convenient for a lot of these Republicans, like Karl Rove, to go after the NBC poll or the ABC poll or CNN polls.

But what they don't say is that the FOX News polls are showing almost exactly the same thing. FOX has some good polls. For example, their most recent battleground states, Ashleigh, in Ohio and Virginia, show Obama ahead of Romney by seven points. In Florida, the FOX News poll shows the President ahead of Romney by five points. Very similar to all these other so-called mainstream poll numbers. You don't hear them complaining about the FOX News polls. They're complaining about the others, so there is an imbalance there.

If you take a look at all these polls, and we at CNN did a poll of polls, you show -- it clearly shows that the President is ahead slightly in almost all of these key battleground states. And I think that's pretty significant.

BANFIELD: We were just showing Virginia, and now here is Florida, and they're saying exactly what you just said, Wolf. And here is the thing. Yes, we're 40 days out. But early voting -- we started the program talking about the significance of early voting and the volumes of people who do early voting. Which brings me to my next question, regardless of what the Romney camp is saying about their internal polls, is it entirely possible they are seeing these polls that are now, as I said, solidifying with early voters and saying it may be time to spend the money on down-ballot contenders and go for the House and go for the Senate because we've lost those states at this point?

[Blogger Note: Wolf immediately rolls back his comments so as not to offend the GOP. Typical. The truth is never enough.]

BLITZER: Yes, I think it's way too premature to say they've lost those states. It's early. I've seen polls turn around the final 40 days of an election. They certainly can turn around in this election. And let's not forget --
(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: But even with the early voting numbers, Wolf?

BLITZER: Even with the early voting numbers. This is not over by any means, Ashleigh. There's three presidential debates, one vice presidential debate. And I remember very vividly -- you probably were too young to remember -- the 1980 race.

His "Nowcast" says that if the election were to be held today, Obama would have a 97.8% chance of winning.

Well, actually the election IS being held today because most states have early voting or absentee voting.

Romney has been on a bus tour of Ohio this week, but they may be pulling their advertising out of Ohio to save money because the push isn't working. When you read about how dreadful the rallies are for Romney in that state, it becomes apparent why it might be a lost cause:

On Wednesday, the Romney campaign reserved $3.4 million worth of advertising time in eight swing states. Nearly half of that — more than $1.5 million — was for Virginia. The rest was spread across Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. His total ad spending for the week is more than $10 million.

Ohio isn't listed. Now it could be that SuperPac money will rush in with more advertising, but at some point the Republicans will shift towards the down-ticket races instead.

When you read about some of his rallies in Ohio its pretty clear why enthusiasm is evaporating. Read, for instance, this devastating snapshot from The Atlantic:

In the Columbus suburb of Westerville, Romney began his day in a high-school gymnasium bedecked with a confounding array of slogans. A whirling "debt clock" raced upward from 16 trillion; video monitors read "Victory in Ohio"; a bright-blue banner professed "We Need a Real Recovery"; and a powder-blue banner stated "We Can't Afford Four More Years." The governor, John Kasich, welcomed him to the stage with a whiplash-inducing mixed message: "Ohio's coming back! Our families are going back to work!" he said, extolling the state's fast-improving and better-than-average unemployment rate. And then, quickly turning dour: "But every day I have to face the headwinds from this president."

Romney's native-son celebrity endorser, golf legend Jack Nickalus, then gave an excruciating 10-minute speech. Nicklaus, now 72 and a Florida resident, is nicknamed "The Golden Bear" after his Columbus-area high-school mascot, and the crowd held signs reading "The Golden Bear for Romney-Ryan." Romney told the crowd he believed Nicklaus to be "the greatest athlete of the 20th century," inviting some ridicule from the sports world, and gave a mostly lifeless 20-minute spiel in which he assured voters he would not lower their taxes. [b]"By the way, don't be expecting a huge cut in taxes, because I'm also going to get rid of deductions and exemptions," he said.

Nancy Pelosi was on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night hinting that Obama might have a chance in Arizona now, and AP is reporting the Dems may start to advertise there. That would be huge and would give Obama another path to victory.

Signaling confidence, Obama's team is considering competing in Arizona.

Obama looked at competing in Arizona in 2008, but decided against it because of the support there for home state Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee. Obama still won 45 percent of the vote.

This year, Obama's team talked early on about running in Arizona, which offers 11 electoral votes, but it never did. Now, with an internal Democratic poll showing Obama narrowly leading Romney, Obama's team might make a play for the state that has seen a 160,000 increase in voter registrations by Democratic-leaning Hispanics over the past four years.

Buying television time in Phoenix, the state's largest city, is expensive and Obama advisers are closely watching their finances.

That's not to say that competing in Arizona would be all about winning: going up on the air in the state — or sending the president in to campaign there, could force Romney to spend valuable resources defending a state he should be able to count on in the quest to reach 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.

If any other red states begin to move into blue territory, then it's over for Romney. I think lots of Republicans here in Tennessee are going to vote for Obama, we may actually go 50-50 this time.

He died Tuesday night at his home in Branson, Mo., after battling bladder cancer for almost a year. Williams was diagnosed with cancer in November 2011 but still continued to perform at his Moon River Theater in Branson even after his devastating diagnosis.

The host of NBC's "The Andy Williams Show" from 1962 to 1971, Williams is known for lending his voice to timeless songs like "Moon River" and "Can't Help Falling In Love" -- songs that led President Ronald Reagan to dub him "a national treasure." Over his 75-year span in the business, Williams has earned 17 gold and three platinum records.

Williams is survived by his wife, Debbie, and his three children (his children are the product of a previous marriage to French dancer Claudine Longet).

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

MoveOn.org has a new series of videos made by citizens in the 47%. Some of these are so powerful and moving - just watch. I wish Mitt Romney would watch as well, but he will still get the message on November 6, 2012.

I can totally understand why any Republican would be embarrassed about Mitt Romney.

In this clip, Romney is introducing Paul Ryan in Dayton Ohio and the fired up crowd is chanting "Ryan! Ryan!" Mitt gets a little jealous (like Fredo in Godfather 2) and vies for attention: "No, say Romney-Ryan, Romney-Ryan." The confused crowd falls silent.

Mika and Joe do a facepalm.

Oh sweet Jesus … what do the Catholics say? ‘Holy Mary, mother of God? Pray for our sinners in thy hour of peace.’ I was a Southern Baptist that went to a Catholic high school. It seems to me — except what would happen, it’s the end of ‘Godfather II.’ I’m Fredo on the back of the boat about to get it in the back of my head.
~ MSNBC's Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe, quoted by Daily Caller

The Far Right is desperate to believe that the polls are much closer than is being reported by the "lamestream media." They believe the polls are actually neck and neck in the swing states and that the country is trending much redder rather than blue.

Dean Chambers, a blogger on Examiner.com who writes from his home in Duffield, Virginia, took that complaint a step further — producing wide Romney leads far beyond what the Republican's campaign or Republican pollsters have suggested is the case.
He created the site unskewedpolls.com, retooling national polling data this July after reading an ABC News/Washington Post poll that "just didn't look right." Looking at the internal data, Chambers saw that the polling unit had sampled more Democrats than Republicans.
"There's no way they can justify that sample," Chambers, 44, told BuzzFeed.
Since July, Chambers has re-weighted national polling data from organizations like Gallup, ARG, and the three networks, to fit the Rasmussen Reports partisan trends. Chambers has published 30 "unskewed" polls on his website and on examiner.com, a national network that pays independent bloggers on a wide range of subject by traffic. In the last month, Chambers's tooled polls have Romney up by seven or more points.

You can see what is wrong with this picture if you compare the Unskewed Poll with the latest snapshot of the country via ElectoralMap.com. To your basic Tea Partier, the country is much more red, the blue of the Democrats is diminishing, swing states only swing to the right, and of course - they win. The problem is that doesn't have much to do with reality. Mitt Romney is an unlikable candidate who makes three gaffes a day, and therefore President Obama will be reelected in just a few short weeks.

In a video posted on YouTube, Brown's staffers are seen holding campaign signs near the Erie Pub, chanting and making tomahawk chops, presumably in reference to Elizabeth Warren's claims of Cherokee heritage.

"It is certainly something that I don't condone," said Brown when asked about the video. "The real offense is that (Warren) said she was white and then checked the box saying she is Native American, and then she changed her profile in the law directory once she made her tenure."

The Tomahawk Chop, really? Didn't Jane Fonda get in trouble for that with the Atlanta Braves? Tacky, and again, racist.

Don't you just love it that during every speech of the Republican Convention they could spin about their immigrant families and no one asked anyone for proof of citizenship or family documents or . . . dare I say it . . . a birth certificate?

Then along comes Scott Brown on Purity Patrol.

Taunting Elizabeth Warren for her supposed Cherokee background is a big mistake. For one thing, half the people in the Eastern U.S. probably have a family story of someone who was part Cherokee or some other tribe in their genealogy. No one in their right mind is going to think she did this because sometime in the future she wanted to run for office.

I didn't realize the Cherokee vote was so big in Massachusetts! *geesh*

My own grandmother had relatives in Oklahoma and one of her family names is on the Cherokee Rolls. Does that make me a Cherokee too? Maybe a fraction, but I have no idea, but I'm also not lying about it, and probably neither is Elizabeth Warren. Even if she is mistaken, genealogy is not an exact science anyway. Some names were never included on the official rolls. Some people kept their native heritage a secret to everyone except their families fear of their neighbors as well as the government. Sometimes all you have is marriage record or a name scribbled in a family bible. Sometimes the courthouse burned down with all the records and all you have is a family story. Any genealogist will tell you the same thing.

Scott Brown should take a trip to Cherokee, NC, sometime, and try to figure out who lives on the Reservation there and who doesn't. Good luck with that! While many people have obvious and outward Native American traits, others could be Elizabeth Warren's cousin, LOL. That's because of all the intermarriage in the colonial days and afterward. Many "Cherokees" look Scotch-Irish or German. That doesn't mean they are not Native Americans. Duh.

You know, the election has already started. In almost half the states in the country, people can already get access to a ballot and start voting by mail, if they want to. You can already do in-person early voting in Idaho, South Dakota, and in Vermont. Early in-person voting also starts on Thursday of this week in Wyoming and in Iowa.
And what that means beyond just the convenience of voting in those states where you can vote early, what that means for this campaign,
is that every day is potentially decisive now.
...With Early Voting every day is election day now.

His new Health Care plan is actually a rip-off of a Democrat - Alan Grayson of Florida. Remember what he said?
"If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly."

In fact, it's easy to believe that Mitt has become so retro in his ideas, maybe thanks to High Inquisitor and Rape Expert Paul Ryan, that he wants to go much further back . . . to the Middle Ages.

Joan: Will she be alright?

Theodoric of York: Well, I'll do everything humanly possible. Unfortunately, we barbers aren't gods. You know, medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time. Why, just fifty years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter's was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach.

Hmm, he went to the Todd Akin school of Medicine!

Joan: You charlatan! You killed my daughter, just like you killed most of my other children! Why don't you admit it! You don't know what you're doing!

Theodoric of York: [ steps toward the camera ] Wait a minute. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps I've been wrong to blindly folow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a "scientific method". Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance! [ thinks for a minute ] Naaaaaahhh!

Steve Kroft: Since the Benghazi tragedy, your opponent has attacked you as being weak on national defense and weak on foreign policy. He says you need to be more aggressive in Iran, haven't done enough to support the revolt in Syria, and that our friends don't know where we stand, and our enemies think we're weak.

Obama: Well, let's see what I've done since I came into office. I said I'd end the war in Iraq. I did. I said that we'd go after al Qaeda. They've been decimated in the Fatah. That we'd go after bin Laden. He's gone. So I've executed on my foreign policy. And it's one that the American people largely agree with.

So if Gov. Romney is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so.

As if we needed any more proof that Mitt is unfit to be President, last night he said on CBS's 60 Minutes that going to the emergency room is the best way to get medical care. Oh, but, you know . . . first have a heart attack from all the years you had untreated high blood pressure without health insurance, and that way you'll get in.

Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

This also proves that the man knows nothing about how the 47% or the 99% live their lives, with or without insurance. Because guess what - it costs plenty to go to the ER even when you have a good health plan. It is not a safety net. It is not a clinic for the poor. We need both of those, but the ER is not the answer.

And everyone knows that the costs of treating the poor are enough to put most hospitals out of business, so their bills get passed along to everyone else. This especially hurts people in rural areas with 47% populations because hospitals don't want to go there, unless the people are elderly and have Medicare of course, because then they can pay. Oh, wait a minute . . . Romney and Ryan want to get rid of Medicare too.

*silent scream*

I think people should have rallies outside emergency rooms carrying signs that say "Mitt Sent Me."

When I heard about this tonight I actually shook with anger. How callous is he going to be? How low can he go? If he ever had real empathy for people in Massachusetts when he passed Romneycare, has he thrown it all away for a chance to be the darling of the "Screw the Poor" Party? And guess what - most Tea Party members don't want to take Grandma or Junior to the ER either!

When asked in a March 2010 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" whether he believes in universal coverage, Romney said, "Oh, sure."

"Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way," he said.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Wow, back during the spring primaries who would have thought that here in September, the day after the Fall Equinox, there would be such a mutiny within the Republican Party. Back then, we might have expected trouble from Santorum or Newt and their followers, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, or the fervid Ron Paulites. But none of that is the problem right now. Now the Republicans have turned on Mitt Romney - the "good" candidate, the easy candidate, the one everybody thought was a shoe-in - because he turned out to be the "Dud" Candidate.

After a rocky week that saw plenty of conservatives break away from Mitt Romney, New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the state of affairs on Sunday.

Brooks was one of several panelists on NBC's "Meet The Press" roundtable, which dove into some data surrounding Romney's popularity.

"Look at his high unfavorable ratings," host David Gregory said. "At 50%. The highest of any candidate running in recent memory. This is an image problem that his philosophical statements in this speech in May to fundraisers only exacerbates."

Brooks did not mince words, calling Romney "the least popular candidate in history."

. . . The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity."
A lot of people weighed in, in I suppose expected ways: "Glad you said this," "Mad you said this." But, some surprises. No one that I know of defended the campaign or argued "you're missing some of its quiet excellence." ...
. . . A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.
Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area.

Ouch!

Meanwhile,
Meanwhile, Reince Priebus, the indomitable RNC chairman, is in a world of denial, vowing that Romney had a good week after all and is just bursting with all kinds of specific plans that he might tell us someday if the campaign goes on long enough. Something like that, LOL.

I think that we had a good week last week, I think in retrospect, in that we were able to frame up the debate last week in the sense of, what future do we want,” Priebus said this morning on “This Week.”
“I think we can look back at last week as a campaign in a couple months and say, this was the defining week in both campaigns,” Priebus said earlier, “where I think both campaigns are crystallizing around a central theme, which is going to be, what kind of future do we want for our kids and grandkids? What type of America do we want for this country?”
. . . he conceded that last week was not the “best” of the campaign for Romney.
“I think Governor Romney’s been pretty clear, it probably wasn’t the best-said moment in the campaign and probably not the best week in the campaign,” Priebus said.

I'll tell you about specifics. First of all, Mitt Romney talks about, all the time, about reducing the GDP spending from 25 cents on the dollar down to 20, reducing small business taxes from 35 to 25, reducing income taxes across the board by 20 percent.

I mean, for crying out loud, we’ve got Paul Ryan on the ticketAs far as specifics go, we're the only ones talking about how to save Medicare. The president's the one that raided Medicare by $700 billion.

I mean, we've got specifics coming out of our eyeballs.

I'm sorry, maybe its just me, but a man who looks so much like Peter Lorre shouldn't really draw attention to his eyeballs. It forced me to make this with Photobucket's edit tool (hint: Liquify) Heh . . .

Saturday, September 22, 2012

The seniors at the AARP conference in New Orleans certainly had Paul Ryan's number and let him know his "message" wasn't welcome. They weren't born yesterday, after all, and while Ryan may think he can appease the elderly with promises not to cut their benefits "for this generation," everyone in the AARP has children, grandchildren, or other dependents who may be right on the edge of disaster without Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, or Obamacare. These are necessary programs to keep our society from falling into chaos.

Yesterday Mitt Romney finally released one complete tax return from 2011, and an affidavit stating the supposed tax situation for the past 20 years. But was it enough to settle questions about his tax liability?

The Nevada Democrat continued to hammer on the Republican presidential nominee, who is slated to speak in Las Vegas this afternoon, dismissing the summary of tax information Romney released Friday.

“It’s rich to hear Mitt Romney complain about people not paying income taxes,” Reid said on a conference call with reporters, referring to Romney’s secretly recorded comments about the 47 percent of people who don’t pay federal income taxes. “An outline by some accountant about his blind trust? That’s not going to do it.”

Later he said: “He’s hiding something. He’s hiding something! It is so evident he’s hiding something!”

From the same article, a quote from the Obama camp:

Ben Labolt, national press secretary for Obama’s campaign, said the summary demonstrates that Romney has the ability to release the returns.

“It’s clear that Romney has 20 years worth of returns prepared, ready to release to the public,” Labolt said on the call. “Instead of providing the rate on tax returns each year, they blended it together over 20 years...I think that’s telling.”

Indeed! And Obama has a shiny new ad based on the Romney tax documents:

Romney and his wife, Ann, have paid 100 percent of the taxes they owe, Brad Malt, a partner at the law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston who manages the Romneys’ investments, wrote in a blog post on the campaign’s website.

Romney makes most of his income from investing an estimated $250 million fortune, and much of that income is taxed at a top rate of 15 percent, rather than the top rate of 35 percent that applies to wages. Romney, 65, is a former Massachusetts governor and co-founder of Bain Capital LLC, the Boston-based private equity firm.

. . . The campaign said it will release a letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which prepares Romney’s returns, summarizing his filings for the past 20 years.

In 2011, Romney earned $14 million, mostly from investments that are taxed at a lower, preferential rate. He also gave a very large amount of money to charity—more than $4 million. So, thanks to the charitable deduction in the tax code, he was technically allowed to reduce the amount of income subject to the income tax even further.

The trouble is, if Romney did that, he would have ended up paying less than 13 percent of his income in federal taxes (back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the amount would have likely been somewhere around 11 percent). That would have conflicted with his statement in August that he has paid at least 13 percent the past ten years. So Romney opted to limit his charitable deduction to just $2.25 million, essentially agreeing to pay the government more in taxes than he needed to. In the end, Romney had an effective federal tax rate of 14.1 percent.

There’s nothing wrong with voluntarily donating a bit more to reduce the federal deficit. Although there is this awkward quote from Romney during a primary debate in January: “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more,” he said. “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”

An email to the Romney campaign account dedicated to responding to questions about tax returns, returns@mittromney.com, produced this response: He has been clear that no American need pay more than he or she owes under the law. At the same time, he was in the unique position of having made a commitment to the public that his tax rate would be above 13%. In order to be consistent with that statement, the Romneys limited their deduction of charitable contributions.

Friday, September 21, 2012

This is laugh-out-loud funny, so enjoy and Happy Friday! The guy who plays Romney, Jason Sudeikis is perfect, LOL. Also, I added the list of the "corrections" that Fox and Friends had to make just for one morning, LOL. It scrolls by too fast to see on the video.

The Bible was not a movie first.

Stalactites is not a childhood disease.

Iowa City never elected Mayor McCheese.

Allegra is not a religion.

Jeremy Lin was traded, not deported.

The sun and the moon do not high-five as they pass each other.

Vaginas don’t look like that.

A dead person’s skull does not contain their memories.

Ron Paul is one person.

Not all cats are gay.

The Atlanta Hawks are a team, not an infestation.

Ellen DeGeneres never married a car.

Benedict Arnold was not a character on Diff’rent Strokes.

A wind turbine has never cut off the head of a pretty girl in a convertible.

The Tasmanian Devil is not the president of Tasmania.

Star Wars is essentially a work of fiction.

Al Gore never claimed to invent Nintendo.

Hawaii does not rotate every six months.

Neil Armstrong was not the first person to moon someone.

The Keystone Pipeline is not filled with Keystone Light.

Swiss banks are not “full of holes.”

Camp David doesn’t have a sister camp called Camp Denise.

Oogielove is not a sexually transmitted disease.

They did not name Mars after the Mars Rover.

Monica Lewinsky was never in an internment camp.

Six comes after five.

Kim Jong-Un is not the CEO of Yahoo.

Left-handed people cannot read your thoughts.

Lobsters are not “ocean spiders.”

Cat Fancy is a magazine, not a man/cat dating website.

The U.S. Postal Service never released a Kesha stamp.

“F” is not a blood type.

Parsley is not one of the Spice Girls.

Bolt is not a new action movie starring John C. Reilly.

LIBOR is not a giant praying mantis.

Old Navy is not one of the armed forces.

The letters in “Massachusetts” cannot be rearranged to spell “same sex marriage.”

Crabs don’t breastfeed.

Animal Planet is not an acceptable nickname for Telemundo.

Marco Rubio does not play for the Timberwolves.

Al-Jazeera is not the co-host of “Tool Time.”

Babies never “skip ahead” to being 10.

Angela Merkel is not a palindrome.

You can’t outrun polio.

The Negro League is not “back and better than ever.”

Latin Inches is not the Mexican metric system.

The Russian national anthem is not the U.S. national anthem played backwards.

Mitt Romney is running on the campaign promise: "Trust Me, I'm Rich and Therefore Good with Money." But in reality, he is displaying the same traits in managing his campaign that America despises in the corporate world.

For instance, Romney's allegedly unbeatable war chest looks better on paper than in reality as small donors are drying up for him. Plus, Mitt did the same thing many coporations do when they are on the ropes - giving undeserved bonuses and golden parachutes to top staffers even when their job performance is an epic failure.

Tell me again why anyone should believe this guy could run the country?

Richard Beeson, Romney’s national political director, received a $37,500 payment on Aug. 31 in addition to his salary, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

In addition, records show at least six other top staffers each received $25,000 bonuses on the same date: campaign manager Matt Rhoades, general counsel Kathryn Biber, policy advisor Lanhee Chen, communications director Gail Gitcho, digital director Zach Moffatt and advisor Gabriel Schoenfeld. Two other employees received $10,000 bonuses.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the bonuses were related to the former Massachusetts governor’s GOP primary performance.

“These were primary win bonuses pursuant to employment agreements paid after the convention,” Saul said in an email Friday morning.

Convention? Oh, you mean that Convention from which Romney/Ryan received absolutely NO bounce, and which is a laughingstock because Romney's own campaign botched the final hour by allowing actor Clint Eastwood to upstage the candidate with an empty chair?

Yeah, that Convention was really worth thousands of dollars in bonuses for staff that clearly don't know how to run a national compaign. But that scenario is right out of the Wall Street playbook. Pay the top tier of staff even as the Titanic is sinking fast.

Romney ought to pay the mainstream media a bonus, too, for spreading the wild rumor all spring and summer that his campaign fundraising was so much greater than the Democrats that Obama was never going to catch up. Not true. Obama is out-fund-raising the Romney camp, especially in donations under $200, and now Mitt is on a budget!

The FEC reports portray massive spending by both sides in August, as the campaigns approached their party's nominating conventions and sought to establish themes for the fall campaign.

Obama's campaign was particularly active, raising $84.2 million and spending $83.2 million last month as it continued to emphasize Obama's efforts to improve the economy and cast Romney as a wealthy former private equity executive who is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans.

The president's campaign ended the month with $88.8 million, compared with $50.4 million for Romney's campaign.

. . . in August, Romney's key outside "Super PAC" - Restore Our Future - plowed through $21.2 million as its fundraising declined for the second month, according to FEC disclosures.

That left the group with just $7.4 million in cash on hand, raising questions about how much of an ad-buying force it will be in the home stretch.

. . . Romney himself raised $66.1 million in August, according to FEC filings. But the campaign spent $61.2 million and could not dip into a large chunk of its cash because a provision in U.S. campaign law walled it off until after his official nomination at the Republican convention in Tampa in late August.

In fact, because of the law, Romney wound up stretched for cash at the end of August and had to take out a $20 million loan to make it to the general election period.

Why do we have to choose our leaders? Isn't that what we have the Supreme Court for?

Polling Guy: If you're gonna vote, we need some photo I.D.
Homer: But I lived here all my life!
Guy: Stoppin' all Americans from voting is for the protection of all Americans.
Homer: But I'm a 40-year-old white guy who didn't go to college and gets all his news from monitors at gas stations.
Guy: In you go! (points to voting booth)

Barack Obama - "He promised me Death Panels and Grandpa is still alive!"

Mitt Romney - "I hear he wears magic underpants. I expect the leader of the free world to go commando! Plus his horse totally choked at the Olympics."